And the paradox of prog fans that won’t accept change…
Those of you based in the UK may have a fond memory for a certain UK sitcom called ‘Only Fools and Horses’. One of the main characters was a hapless and rather gormless road sweeper affectionately known as ‘Trigger’, on account of his searingly trigger fast wit and *intelligence (*British sarcasm). Trigger once proclaimed to Del and Rodney in a famous sketch in the show, that he had used the same broom for 20 years….even though it has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles.. Apparently this is also called The Ship of Theseus Paradox. Plutarch asked whether a wooden ship which has had every single piece of wood replaced was still the same ship.
The paradox is alive and well in the world of prog too. I’m sure we all know a band or two of a certain name where the substantial part, or just all of the original members are no longer present. I’m not mentioning names here, online wars have been started in the name of such conjecture and my flameproof suit is at the cleaners.
As many of you know, I love the expressive world of irony, metaphor and allegory, and I do find it hilarious that a group of people of advanced years, not untainted by the ageing process, seem to be the least tolerant when it comes to new music from ‘Trigger’s Broom’ bands.
Like perennial teenagers stuck in Boomer bodies, their minds are stuck somewhere in 1973 when the giants of prog were in their caped and Mellotron adorned prime. Their bodies tell quite the different story of course and some are much larger, greyer, follically challenged and generally world weary (I include myself in this). So then wonder why they have such unreasonable expectations that a band can form in their teenage years and remain in a state of perpetual youth and brio for some 50 years, without disagreement in creative direction, or suing each other… without illness, death or a myriad of other life circumstances that dictate a change in the band lineup. As anybody who has actually been in a rock band will tell you, keeping any band together for more than 6 months is more than a minor miracle.
Prog fans are difficult to please it seems.
A post script to this is that according to research, our bodies replace many of their nearly 30 trillion cells regularly. About 330 billion of those cells are replaced every day. So by next week we could be almost entirely different beings than today. The bit that stops us morphing into multi-headed dopplegangers is that our DNA stays the same from the day of a cell’s birth until it dies. It also changes over time too, but much more slowly.
So we are all Trigger’s Broom… and as long as the music still sounds like your favourite band, I think it’s OK if they now don’t quite look like you remember.